Interview with Karen Straughan up on Tea with CAFE Podcast

Following up on our recent high profile event with Karen Straughan at Ryerson University, CAFE is looking for students, grads, faculty, staff and any member of the Ryerson community to join our new Men’s Issues Awareness Society at Ryerson University. Contact us

Watch CAFE’s Adam McPhee interview Karen:

Footage from Karen Straughan: Are Men Obsolete? Feminism, Free Speech and the Censorship of Men’s Issues, our recent event at Ryerson University, is now up on our YouTube channel, EqualityCanadaTV

Ryerson University is requiring we move to a new location and pay a $1600 security fee for the event to proceed. We recognize the University is doing what they think is best to balance fundamental freedoms against safety considerations, but such a “free speech fee” is wrong and ultimately unhelpful, only feeding into the strategy of those who would respond to positive dialogue with violence and intimidation.

The Canadian Association for Equality is starting 2014 with a bang! Men’s Issues has arrived at Ryerson University and you’re invited to join the group and its inaugural event. We’re very excited to announce a public event featuring Karen Straughan, best known as GirlWritesWhat on YouTube, blogs and social media!

Are Men Obsolete?

Last year the Ryerson Student Union refused to ratify an organization concerned with the health & well being of men – run by female students! In November the Munk Debates posed the question: Are Men Obsolete? To confront a dangerous trend, the Canadian Association for Equality announces its 2014 New Year’s Resolution: to host no less than 8 major events at different universities and colleges across Canada over the course of the year in an effort to build men’s issues awareness on campus.

The male suicide epidemic and violence against young men, the lack of attention to men’s physical and mental health, declining university enrolment, parental alienation against fathers, and sexist perceptions of men in popular culture need a voice, and they are too important to be ignored any longer.

So please join Karen Straughan, the YouTube sensation GirlWritesWhat, at the launch of the Ryerson-based Men’s Issues Awareness Society

Karen Straughan is a Canadian human rights activist, blogger and writer who rose to prominence through her powerful YouTube videos commenting on current affairs and cultural issues. A mother of three, Karen speaks out fearlessly on gender and equality with passion and clarity, refusing to back down when intimidated. As a female who has aligned herself with men’s issues awareness, Karen has been the target of hatred and campaigns of misinformation.

Karen will address the necessity of building safe spaces to discuss the health and wellbeing of men at university campuses, even in the face of organized resistance against any group that dares to discuss gender in a way other than through officially sanctioned perspectives. Last year, the Ryerson Student Union passed an emergency motion just in time to deny ratification to the Ryerson Equality Association that would have been run by two female students, instead rejecting:

5. The concept of misandry as it ignores structural inequity that exist between men and women
6. Groups, meetings events or initiatives [that] negate the need to centre women’s voices in the struggle for gender equity.

Karen will speak to how men and women can work together on a variety of positive projects

* Addressing the drop in male high school graduation and university enrolment, and the lack of men in key professions like nursing, education and early learning, the latter despite the fact that having a male role model in early life could offset the disastrous results of fatherlessness in our society

* Confronting dangerous expectations of masculinity that exacerbate men’s health and make it “unmanly” to seek help even when desperately needed

* Responding to the sexist stereotyping of men that is now routine in everything from television and pop culture, to policies like legal aid clinics that deny service selectively to males and hospital abuse screening programs that refuse to consider the possibility of domestic violence against men even when confronted with data to the contrary.

In response to the censorship of men’s issues at Ryerson University and beyond, based on a radical version of feminism that brooks no heterodoxy, Karen will also challenge us to take an honest look at where modern feminism has failed in its approach to men and men’s issues, and where it may have become a force impeding gender equality. She will argue that in treating women like children and men with disdain, society becomes unable to confront complicated issues that require us to all work together.

Live Streaming and Remote Participation for Karen Straughan event

It’s absolutely vital we have a great attendance as we seek to inaugurate our programs at Ryerson University following the Ryerson Student Union efforts to ban a group affiliated with us last year focused on the health and well-being of men and boys.

But if you can’t make it to Toronto we encourage you to join us remotely on our live streaming youtube or Google+ event pages.